Electronic devices, such as tablet computers and smartphones, can play media content such as audio and video content. Often devices stream media content from a remote source, but media content can also be stored locally. However, smartphones and other devices that can play media, also often have active data connections, such as via a cellular network or a local 802.11 Wi-Fi network. Such devices can receive other communications, such as an email, instant message, incoming telephone call, and so forth, while playing back media content. These other communications can interrupt the playback, and can require the user to interact with the device manually to resume playback.
For example, while using a device to stream audio from a remote server, the user can place the device out of arms' reach or in an otherwise inaccessible spot. If for some reason the streaming playback is interrupted, such as by the user accepting an incoming phone call, there is no convenient way to instruct the device to attempt to resume playback at the same timestamp without the user picking up and interacting with the device. Similarly, if the user receives an instant message during media playback, the user has no way to instruct the device to act upon the events without picking up and interacting with the device. In another example, a user is driving a vehicle while the device is linked to the vehicle, such as via Bluetooth. In this situation, the driver should not be distracted by picking up the device to manually restart a stream or otherwise interact with the device in order to respond to an event.
Simply enabling speech recognition and voice control is not an adequate solution, because that would require the device to listen for the entire duration of the media playback, and consequently require filtering of background noise generated by the device itself. Bluetooth integration can address part of this problem, such as allowing a user to answer phone calls depending on the degree of integration in the vehicle, but many simple actions still require the user to pick up and interact with the device. These and other problems exist for hands-free device interaction.